Do not travel outside the US unless absolutely necessary! advise immigration attorneys
While India is not on the proposed travel ban list, immigration attorneys are advising their clients – be they H-1B visa holders and their families, or international students or even green card holders to not travel overseas.
The reasons are many – ranging from delays in stamping at the US consulate in the home country (say India), reintroduction of extreme vetting and even increasing cases of secondary inspection including detention at airports on return back to the US.
Kripa Upadhyay, a Seattle based immigration attorney, said, “As heartless as this may seem, foreign nationals (especially those needing renewal of H-1B or F-1 visa stamps) really need to think twice about leaving the US right now.”
The US Department of State has updated the eligibility requirements for interview waiver appointments (referred to as dropbox appointments). Previously, applicants could qualify for an interview waiver if they had been issued a non-immigrant visa in any category (except B visitor visas) and were applying within 48 months of its expiration.
Under the revised rules, dropbox now only applies and is available only to applicants renewing a visa in the same non-immigrant category that has expired within the past twelve months. Thus, if you are an international student with an F-1 visa and now need an H-1B you must wait for an interview slot. If you have an H-1B and need an extension, but your earlier visa was issued more than twelve months ago, you must also wait for an interview slot, Upadhyay explained.
Snehal Batra, managing attorney at NPZ Law Group, told TOI, “Delays due to visa appointment availability is only part of the concern. We know of individuals who are stuck in administrative processing for no apparent reason other than additional scrutiny and security clearances. This should not have happened, if the individual has been previously approved for a visa multiple times. I think we can expect to see ‘extreme vetting’ similar to the tenure of the earlier Trump administration.”
If US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has approved an H-1B, the consular officer has the right to refuse the visa and send the application back to USCIS for re-adjudication. Upadhyay added, “In a situation like this, employees outside the country would be stuck for several months (4-6 months minimum) before they can return to the US.”
“If travel is unavoidable, visa applicants and their employers should also try to have contingency plans in case of delayed stamping such as continuing work from their home country,” said Rajiv S. Khanna, managing attorney at Immigration.com
As regards green card holders, immigration attorneys are seeing an uptick in the number of green card holders (including Indians) who are being subject to secondary inspection including overnight detention at the port of entry (airports) by the US Custom and Border Protection (CBP) officers. Some are also ‘pressured’ to voluntarily surrender their green card. Especially susceptible to this treatment are elderly Indians who live with their children in America, but prefer to avoid the harsh winters and spend several months in India. For those currently in the US – many of whom have had green cards for decades but didn’t apply for American citizenship – immigration attorneys are advising them to get American passports at the earliest, and to avoid travelling out of the country till they have.